


Grounded

by kuzibah



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 10:09:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16156907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuzibah/pseuds/kuzibah
Summary: Each of the housemates on how they take care of the other two.





	Grounded

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2009, after the first series.

Annie

The boys were lucky to have her. They really were. They’d be living like two pigs in a sty without her to tidy the house, knee-deep in unwashed clothes and empty takeaway boxes. Oh, they may give her grief about “constantly” washing up and making tea, but who would if she didn’t? 

They might think they’d be okay on their own, and alright, Mitchell had been taking care of himself for a century or so. And George was pretty good about not leaving plates and cups about. But a house really needed a woman’s touch to be a home, she thought. Someone to put things in order and take care of the little details.

There was a reason confirmed bachelors died young.

And she was happy to do it. She liked the two of them, liked how they cared for her and protected her and made her feel like she wasn’t invisible and insubstantial to most of the world. 

Looking after the two of them was the least she could do. 

Mitchell

Mitchell occasionally wondered what would have happened to George and Annie if he’d never shown up. 

Honestly, if he’d walked down that alley even five minutes later, George would have been dead, and he’d never have met Annie at all. At best, she’d still be haunting their little house, lonely and confused. At worst, she’d have simply faded away into nothing. Mitchell didn’t like to think about that.

But what if he’d ignored George’s pleas for help, followed his instincts and left the werewolf to find his own way? If Mitchell hadn’t been having a crisis of identity right at that moment, if he hadn’t thought of Seth as the most cowardly kind of thug, if George hadn’t looked so pathetic, squinting at him with his bloodied nose, who knows? He probably would have. 

And then the same. George dead, probably sooner than later. Annie, lost and sad.

And still, they needed him. Needed his experience, the knowledge gleaned over years and decades and millions of miles. George hadn’t even known vampires existed, and Annie had never met another ghost. It wasn’t like he’d seen it all, not by a long shot, but they were babes in the woods by comparison. 

They needed him, and he liked to be needed.

George

George had always been a little different. Even before, he was the quiet one, the studious one. Which was okay with him. There were worse reputations to have. 

But here, in the house, he was the odd man out simply by virtue of being, well, alive. It was like being behind the looking glass sometimes. Most of the time, really. 

He knew there were things Annie and Mitchell knew that he didn’t. The secrets only the dead know, that they protected him from. Annie had told him not to look through her door, but she didn’t tell Mitchell. Because Mitchell already knew what was there. 

But George had special knowledge, too. Things Annie and Mitchell might have known once, but were now forgotten. The things they longed for, simple things. Like warmth, which Annie tried to approximate by holding hot cups of tea in her hands. Joy, like Mitchell with his old comedy films, laughing at scenes he’s seen literally hundreds of times. And family, which every day in this house becomes less playacting and more real.

That’s why they needed George, to remind them. About all the things that made them human.


End file.
